Acerebral Logorrhea

 ::: THE DISCLAIMER ::: In order to start a vehicle’s engine, one must engage the ignition. Certainly there are different ways to describe starting a car, however when teaching someone to drive and describing how to start that car, I suspect most people say something along those lines. I’m even more certain that almost nobody explains how to start a car by tasking their pupil to read the issued patent for that vehicle’s particular ignition mechanism. Thus, in order to achieve deeper levels of understanding, a basic understanding must come first. A basic understanding of 道 as a word of convenience allows one to focus less on the word 道 itself and more on the myriad layers of meaning it implies — or, as Bruce Lee stated in Enter the Dragon: ‘don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory’. It is with such perspective that I consider the first line of the 道德經 to be a disclaimer. A basic translation of every word other than 道 in the first line yields: 道 c...

It should be noted that I am not a Chinese speaker; English is the only language in which I am fluent. I make use of resources available via the internet and texts in my personal library to glean definitions as best as I’m able. ::: WHAT IS 道 ? ::: From an entirely rational point of view, 道 is a word of convenience. 道, as a word in the Chinese language, has several meanings attached to it. Such as it is with many words in the English language, e.g., ‘case’, the definition of 道 at any given moment seems wholly dependent upon the context in which it is used. Definitions include: road, direction, path, way, principle, truth, morality, reason, skill, method, say, speak, express, barriers, questions, commands. 道 is also referred to as a ‘measure word for long, thin things’. Measure words are apparently far more common in the Chinese language than they are in English, even though they are fairly prevalent in English as well (a gallon of water, a pinch of salt, &c). In Chinese sc...

 道德經 = Dao De Jing / Tao Te Jing (the primary text of Daoism/Taoism) 易經 = Yi Jing / I Ching (an ancient Chinese text prescribing claromancy to guide its use) ::: A DAILY PRACTICE ::: The 道德經 is a diagram of existence and the 易經 is a survival guide. To calibrate my thoughts at the start of each day I first consult the 易經. The specific interpretation I use is titled “The I Ching or Book of Changes — A Guide to Life’s Turning Points”, by Brian Browne Walker (St Martin’s Press, 1992). Based on the hexagram(s) I receive from the consultation, I then read a verse from the 道德經 (translation published by Derek Lin). Into a notebook I transcribe portions of my readings from each. At present, this has been my daily practice for roughly half a year and my experience thus far has been that it helps me improve my emotional balance, which helps improve clarity of thought, which helps improve acceptance, which helps improve understanding, which helps me feel at peace with myself and my presen...

Human communication is fraught with metaphor and simile; these are basic tools which help not only establish a shared frame of reference but allow us to view events from a more detached perspective (seeing the forest, if you will). As such they are crucial in language development. However, their use is not always helpful to providing a foundation from which we can approach or respond to the event(s) we’re analyzing. I don’t mean the notion of “mixed metaphors”, tho that is of course a thing; what I mean here is that too often inapt comparisons are made which detract from our ability to understand that with which are attempting to deal, which seems frequent in propaganda. Recently I have been hearing media, especially left-leaning media, making comparisons between COVID-19 and 9/11, particularly as relates to the death toll. I’ve also been seeing this happening more frequently in social media from friends and acquaintances who are also left-leaning. Ultimately it seems the point they’re...

 This morning I awoke with a single phrase in the forefront of my mind, a phrase which can be found on all physical currency in the United States and one we should all bear in mind as we continue the debate (nay, shouting match) about gun laws in our nation. No, I am not referring to “In God We Trust”. I wouldn’t be writing this piece had that been the phrase — thoughts and prayers have already been covered. The phrase “E Pluribus Unum” — Out of Many, One — should be serving as a reminder to all of us that we need to stay aware of the bigger picture whenever we consider specific issues affecting the country, lest we miss the forest for the trees. As we are confronted with and therefore must consider the positions of President Trump, the NRA leadership and those who agree with them, we should not let ourselves be lulled into a sense that this debate over gun laws is exclusively about the right to bear arms. It would behoove us to remember, for the sake of posterity, that in addition...

I started learning JavaScript in March 2017, primarily via freeCodeCamp (fCC) via their Front End Developer certification path and lightly supplemented by free courses offered by Codecademy . By the beginning of May, I’d completed most of fCC’s Front End path, had signed up for the “ Chingu Cohorts ” and had taken on the Chingu’s “Build to Learn” (B2L) project signup, an open-ended project wherein you can choose what you want to work on. For my project, the decision was to use the Trello API to build “something” — not really sure what (and it’s still not fully realized what the ultimate goal is), but the desire was to learn Trello’s API by way of creating HTML views based on the Trello data. My starting approach was to consider that, regardless of whatever other views may result from the project, building a view that shows all of the user’s boards, lists and cards on a single page would give me a decent understanding of not only Trello’s API but also (perhaps more importantly) the data...